


let the tide swallow me whole

by therestlessbrook



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Charity Auctions, Closet Sex, F/M, Smut, Undercover, ksw: makeout monday, post season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 19:21:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20214940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therestlessbrook/pseuds/therestlessbrook
Summary: He’s in a suit. A good suit. Sharp lines and crisp edges. He has a short beard and his face is unbruised.She hasn’t seen him since the hospital room. Since he left with that kid. She hasn’t said his name in months, not since she murmured, Good luck, Frank.And yet, here he is. Standing in front of her, a bottle of beer in his hand. “Get you a drink?” he asks quietly.(Or, Karen goes undercover at a dating auction.)





	let the tide swallow me whole

It’s for a good cause.

That’s what Ellison tells her.

That’s what she tells herself.

It’s harder to believe when she’s dressed in a scrappy little black gown with towering heels and her hair done up in a bun while a man literally auctions her off to the highest bidder.

Good cause, she reminds herself.

After all, these bachelorette auctions are supposed to be for charity—but a source came to her and said half the money was being funneled into a money laundering scheme. Going undercover is just… part of the story. It’s part of the job.

The bright lights are making her sweat. Her dress is too tight and her heels hurt.

And there’s something kind of humiliating in watching men literally put down a monetary value on the women around her. Sure, it’s supposedly for charity and all that it entails is a private dinner, but still.

Karen is hustled up to the spotlight and the auctioneer gives her a once-over. Like she’s livestock or something. “And now we’ve got Ms. Gail Edgewater. Do I have five thousand—yes, I see five thousand—now what about—oh, and we’ve got five thousand, one hundred. Five thousand, two hundred. Three hundred! Come on, lads, look at those legs—”

Karen grits her teeth. With the spotlight on her, she can barely see, but she manages to blink the world into focus.

There are circular tables surrounding the stage. Men in suits, all wealthy, all white, and any of them could be the asshole who’s been funneling money away from cancer research. She just needs to see the books of this place, maybe get into one of the computers. Maybe, after she’s auctioned off, she could claim she needs to go to the bathroom and—

There are two men in a fierce bidding war. One is in his sixties and the other looks like he graduated from college last week and probably has a trust fund stashed inside of his too-tight designer suit.

“Twelve thousand,” the auctioneer is saying, “do we have—”

“Twenty-thousand.”

The voice silences the chatter for a moment, then it starts up again. The young kid looks irritated, ready to raise his paddle out of sheer pride, but the older man just shakes his head. “Twenty thousand,” the auctioneer crows. “Going once, going twice—sold to the gentlemen without the tie.”

She can’t see who bought her—so it’s only when she’s guided off the stage and hustled through the tables that she sees—

He’s in a suit. A good suit. Sharp lines and crisp edges. He has a short beard and his face is unbruised.

She hasn’t seen him since the hospital room. Since he left with that kid. She hasn’t said his name in months, not since she murmured, _Good luck, Frank._

And yet, here he is. Standing in front of her, a bottle of beer in his hand. “Get you a drink?” he asks quietly.

She isn’t quite sure what she says—she is pretty sure she makes words at some point, and then there’s a glass of wine in her hand and they’re standing at a table in the corner of the room. She is hearing another woman be auctioned off, and in the chaos and noise, she says very quietly, “What the hell, Frank?”

He nods. “Guess I deserve that.”

She’s still hurting, if she’s honest with herself.

“You vanished for months,” Karen says in an undertone. “Last I heard of you, there was a gang shootout. And then you were gone. I didn’t know if you were alive.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I—I needed to get my head on straight. After what happened with the kid, with Bill… I just needed time.”

She looks away, out at the tables. “What are you doing here? Let me guess—you heard about the money laundering and came to kill who’s responsible?”

Frank glances at the crowd; she does, too. There are a few eyes on them. Frank leans in, pushes a stray strand of hair behind Karen’s ear and whispers, “Actually, it’s because David Lieberman has an alert for whenever your face appears on the internet. Some kind of reverse image search that’s constantly running, only with ID software.”

“That’s not creepy at all,” says Karen, but she doesn’t pull away. The touch of his fingers against her ear has sparks of electricity running down her spine. It’s just a light touch but she feels it in her neck, her chest and—lower than that.

“I didn’t ask him to,” Frank says, still quiet. Still intimate, like they’re any two people on a date. “But he knows… well.”

“He knows what?”

Frank exhales, and the breath is warm against her cheek. “That if you were in trouble, I’d want to know.”

“I’m not in trouble,” she says. “I’m at a date auction.”

“Under a false name,” he says. “And the auction is backed by several corrupt millionaires. I wasn’t going to let you just walk in here without backup.”

“Is that what you are?” she says. “My back-up? And how the hell did you manage to afford twenty-grand on this?”

He smiles thinly.

“Never mind,” she says. “I don’t want to know.”

“You want the guys responsible?” asks Frank.

“Of course I do,” she says.

He reaches down, weaves their fingers together. “Then come on.”

He leads her out of the ballroom and into a hallway. It looks like it goes to a service corridor, and she hopes anyone watching will think that they’re just heading to a private place to… do whatever rich people do at a place like this.

“How do you know where we’re going?” she asks.

“Blueprints,” he replies.

They squeeze through the kitchens, passing a few confused servers, then down another hallway. Frank ends up taking her to what looks like a custodial closet. He pulls the door open and gestures her inside. Karen reaches up, pulling on a light above them. It swings on a chain, making the light dance. Frank shuts the door behind them.

“Why are we in here?” asks Karen.

“Because,” says Frank, “there are no cameras in here.” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a USB drive. “David said you’d find this useful.” He places it into her palm and wraps her fingers around it. “Money trails. You can either write your article or give it to the cops. Your choice.”

She lets out a breath. This is exactly what she came for, but somehow this isn’t how she imagined it happening.

Frank seems to sense her mood because he says, “What? Did you actually want to go on a date with that twenty-something asshole?”

“You don’t know he was an asshole,” she says.

“He’s a twenty-one-year-old billionaire,” Frank replies. “Of course he’s an asshole.”

“I just…” She presses a hand to her eyes. “Frank.”

“What is it?” All of the bravado and pride drops out of his voice, leaving just… Frank. They’re just Frank and Karen again, and she can’t quite look him in the eye. “Talk to me.”

She searches about for an answer. For anything to say.

“I just—I’ve been thinking about what I’d say to you if I saw you again,” she finally says. “I’ve been thinking about it for months. And now that you’re here, it’s like… all of those imaginary conversations and arguments have been yanked away from me and I don’t know how to do this. I should be asking if the kid’s still alive, if you had anything to do with that murder-suicide with the senator’s parents, if Billy Russo’s really gone… but—shit. It’s not what I want to ask.”

He’s close. He’s so close because there isn’t anywhere else to stand in this closet.

“What is it, Karen?” he asks softly. “What’d you want to know?”

She can’t do this. She shouldn’t do this—but she has to because if she doesn’t, this moment will haunt her the way the last one did. She needs closure of some kind, even if it’s the end of all of her hopes and all of the amorphous, unnamed longings she’s harbored.

“That moment in the hospital,” she says. “Right before—right before that girl walked in. What were you… you were going to say something.”

It isn’t quite a question, but it’s enough.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” says Frank, and his voice is a little rough. “If I said—fuck, if I’d said anything back then, I’ve had said it all. And I couldn’t, not then. Not when I had the kid depending on me, not when Billy Russo was threatening everyone I cared about.”

She looks up, meets his eyes. His face is so close she can see individual eyelashes when he blinks.

“Then what were going to do?” she asks.

He exhales hard. Glances away, then back again. His hand comes up, and his knuckles are so gentle against her jaw. His thumb touches her lower lip and she feels it like punch to the gut.

“I was trying to say goodbye,” he says. “Only way I knew how.”

“And how was that, Frank?” she asks. She isn’t sure what she’s expecting—the brush of his forehead against hers, like in the elevator, or maybe a kiss to the cheek.

She certainly isn’t expecting Frank Castle to lower his mouth to hers. For a moment, everything’s utterly still. And then this thing between them, this thing that’s been simmering for far too long, finally catches fire.

Before she’s truly aware of what’s happened, her hands are on his chest, dragging him closer. Her back is to the wall, and there’s a broom clattering to the floor and Frank is kissing her like he’ll die if he stops. It’s achingly good, the touch of his tongue sliding into her mouth, and she moans into the kiss when one of his big hands curls around the back of her neck. His fingertips just brush her hairline, sending shivers of pleasure up her scalp. She wants him. So damned much.

She shifts, and suddenly she realizes that her pelvis is pressed to his. The material of her dress is thin, meant to entice some cocky millionaire, and now she’s caught him instead.

This is a bad idea. It’s such a bad idea but—

She wants him. She wants him near her, inside of her, with her. She wants him safe, wants him home—with her.

She breaks the kiss, because she has to. It’s the only time she can. “This better not be you saying goodbye,” she gasps.

He looks absolutely wrecked by their kiss—lips red and pupils blown. “This is why I was glad the kid interrupted,” he says hoarsely. “Wanted to kiss you back then, but I knew if I did, I’d never leave. I’d say—fuck, I’d tell you that I loved you and you’d never let go.”

“Both hands, you said,” she reminds him. She feels a little drunk on his confession.

“Listen.” He touches her cheek with an unsteady hand. “You want me to go, tell me now. Because if this happens, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to leave.”

“Good,” she says fiercely, and kisses him again.

Her hands slide up his chest and she feels the rise and fall of his breathing, the comforting beat of his heart. He has always been one of the most vital, viscerally alive people she’s ever met. Even when he was beaten half to death, he still radiated life in a way that was intoxicating.

One of his hand strokes down her neck, down to her waist. She arches against him, and with that contact, she can feel the hard ridge of his cock through his trousers. He groans into her mouth and his hand curls around her ass. It feels good—the light rake of his fingers. She rolls her hips a second time, and this time her clit bumps up against him in a way that makes her whimper.

“Shit,” he curses, drawing away for a moment. “We shouldn’t—we’re in a fucking closet—”

“We’re fucking in a closet,” she agrees, and reaches down to get a finger beneath the hem of her dress. She pulls it up, dragging the fabric across her hips, rolling it not her stomach. Her panties are—well, less than ideal. She wasn’t planning on sleeping with anyone, so they’re the comfortable bikini-style ones that don’t show panty lines.

She might as well be wearing lacy lingerie, though, judging by the look on Frank’s face. His thumb touches the edge of her panties, as if asking permission, then slides beneath. She knows how wet she is—she can feel the sodden cotton between her legs.

“Karen,” Frank says, like he doesn’t know what else to say. He seems at a loss for words as he touches her. When his index finger glides across her clit, the back of her head hits the closet wall and her legs feel a bit wobbly. He circles it a few times, then strokes lower. His hands are warm and steady and when one of his fingers slides up and into her, it’s all she can do to remain upright. The pleasure is overwhelming, almost bewildering in its intensity. He’s still fully dressed, and here she is, her dress around her waist while he fucks her with one—now two—of his long fingers. His other hand steals up to her chest, edging beneath the strap of her dress. He pulls it down and she shrugs helpfully. One of her breasts comes free and he looks as though he’s staring at all the treasures of the world.

“You would be a breast guy, wouldn’t you?” she says, with a breathless little laugh. And then his fingers crook inside of her and his thumb strokes across her clit and she can barely think, never mind form words. It’s good, it’s too good, the pleasure razor-sharp and she gasps, “Wait.”

He stops immediately, eyes flickering over her face. “What?”

She has to breathe, to drag air into her lungs. “Little too intense. All at once.” She reaches for his belt. “First time—first time you make me come, I want you inside of me.”

Shit. She didn’t even know she was going to say that until the words are out. His breathing becomes even more unsteady, and he says, “Okay.”

Her hands are on his belt, and then his trousers are falling away. He’s wearing boxer-briefs, and she runs her finger along the line of his hard cock. A tease before she tugs the last garment away and she finally gets a good look at him. His cock is gorgeous—and maybe that’s a strange thing to think, but it’s true. He’s thick enough that she knows she’s going to feel him, and it’s going to be good.

“I don’t have a condom,” he says raggedly.

“I’m on birth control,” she says. She strokes him from root to tip, and he shudders. “I’m clean.”

“Got tested a few months ago,” he replies. “Same.”

He takes hold of one of her legs, wrapping around his waist. She’s unsteady like that, but he has her pinned to the wall with his weight—and he won’t let her fall. There’s a protective edge to the way he curls one hand around her side, pulling her to him. Her arms wrap around his neck as he reaches between them and—and then he’s sliding into her.

She’s right—she does feel the girth and there’s a twinge of discomfort at first. It’s been a long time since she’s had anything bigger than her own fingers. But then her body remembers how to do this, and her internal muscles relax into the stretch. For a few heartbeats, neither of them move—not even to take a breath. All she can feel is him, around her, inside of her, she can taste his breath on her lips and still it isn’t enough. “I love you, too,” she whispers, because she needs to say it.

“Karen.” He kisses the corner of her mouth, just a soft little kiss, and then he is moving. Every thrust shakes the closet a little, makes the shelves quiver and Karen gasp. It’s indescribably intimate—not just the fucking but the sounds he makes, like he’s being taken apart and put back together. The line between his brows is strikingly vulnerable, and it makes her want to wrap her arms around him, to try and give him one safe place in this fucked up world.

She rolls her hips against his, and at this angle she knows she’s going to come hard and fast. Her clit is grinding up against him when he bottoms out. The pleasure of it has her breathless and straining, climbing higher and higher, every muscle taut. It’s as intense as before, when he was fucking her with his hand, but now she lets herself get there. She feels the orgasm build, winding tight, and then the pressure breaks. She comes hard, whimpering his name as she tightens and relaxes around his cock, her body trying to pull him even deeper. He curses and then all it takes is a few more thrusts and he stills inside of her. She can’t feel him coming, but she knows he is; his stomach is tight and trembling, pressed to hers. She holds on, fingers stroking his back as he jerks one last time. An aftershock, maybe. Then his forehead is pressed to hers and they’re breathing together.

He carefully pulls out—and she pulls up her panties before his semen can stain the floor. Sure, it’ll stain her favorite panties but it’s a loss she’s willing take.

There’s a bit of fumbling to get her dress back into place and then his trousers buttoned. Her legs won’t stop shaking and he says, “You okay?” So that’s what his voice sounds like after sex—gravel-rough, with just a hint of smoke. It makes her want him again.

“Yeah.” She leans against him. “Just a little tired.” She leans into him, kisses his lower lip. “Let’s go home.”

He blinks a few times. Then he says, “Okay.”

He is reaching for the closet door when it swings open.

A custodian stands there, cart at the ready, gazing into the closet.

Frank and Karen stare back. “Sorry,” Karen says and then they’re moving. Frank’s hand is at her back and she’s clinging to him, shaking with mortified laughter. They hasten down the hallway, and then to a stairwell. “Can you imagine if he’d showed up about two minutes earlier?”

“Next time,” Frank says, “we’re using a bed. Behind a door that locks.”

Next time. She likes the sound of that.


End file.
